FYI: Verizon’s 60-Day Device Lock Policy is Live

Apologies for not following up on this sooner, but Verizon’s FCC-approved 60-day device lock policy is live and has been for the past month. In July, Verizon posted the new policy to their site without much noise.

To recap the new policy, Verizon has said that to help deter theft they will put a 60-day SIM lock on phones purchased from them (or their retail partners) that will prevent you (or a bad person) from taking a phone you purchased to a different carrier. The lock will be automatically removed following 60 days and won’t be locked again, meaning you can take phones to other carriers after that point.

We’ve noted a number of times that this violates the rules Verizon agreed to when they licensed C Block spectrum for LTE years ago, but since the FCC is as pro-carrier as it could ever hope to be and led by an industry pawn friend, they told Verizon in June that they’d allow phone locking with a partial waiver of rules. Shortly after the FCC announced that waiver, Verizon said they would “soon” implement the new policy.

On July 19, they did just that.

You can read the new policy right here.